Administrative
Contact - The individual responsible for maintenance of a domain
name. This individual is authorized to interact with the registrar
on behalf of the domain name registrant.
Usually the Administrative Contact is the registrant.

Appraisal - An evaluation of the potential
market value of a domain
name.

A Record - Address Record; by adding an A
Record line to a DNS
listing, you are adding an address for a domain
that resolves
to more than one network
interface. A Records are entered as an IP
address (111.22.333.45) and have their own line in the DNS
entry.

Cable Modem - A device that uses a cable TV
signal to connect a computer to the Internet.
Cable modems offer download
speeds of up to 56Mbps and upload speeds of up to 10Mbps.

Cache - A section of a
computer's memory which retains recently accessed data in order to speed
up repeated access to the same data. Your computer and browser
use cache memory to load Web
pages more quickly. Your ISP
also uses a cache for this purpose. If you ask your computer to view a
page, and it finds the page in the cache, it will read the cached page
instead of the page from the Internet,
unless you reload
the page.

Change
Registrar - To make a new registrar
responsible for maintaining your ownership of a domain
name.

CNAME (Canonical Name) -
A CNAME record maps an address to its canonical name. The name
server handles CNAME records in a different manner than aliases are
handled in the host table. When a name
server looks up a name and finds a CNAME record, it replaces the name
with the canonical name and looks up the new name.

Cookie - A unique identifier sent to a user's
computer during a visit to a Web
site. Cookies can be used to remember information such as user names and
passwords (so a users don't have to enter them every time they visit a
site) or to track future visits to a Web
site.

Country Code - A top-level
domain name that corresponds to a particular geographical area. Country
code domain
names are alternatives to ".com," ".net," or ".org" domain
names. Examples of Country codes are ".it" for Italy and ".cn" for
China. The registrar
in charge of registering the different country codes varies.

Deleted Domain - A previously registered domain
name whose registration has been cancelled by the registrar,
possibly due to a dispute over ownership or a breach of contract. A
dropped domain is available for registration by the public.

Dial-Up Connection - A connection to the
Internet via an analog modem over regular phone lines. Analog modems can
typically connect at speeds of up to 56Kbps.

Domain Name - A
meaningful, easy-to-remember "handle" for addressing computers and
information on the Internet.
Domain names typically end with a suffix that denotes the type or
location of a resource (for instance, ".com" for commercial resources or
".jp" for resources based in Japan).

Domain Name Dispute -
A disagreement concerning the ownership of or legal right to a domain
name. While domain name disputes are usually handled by ICANN,
lawsuits involving domain names are becoming increasingly common in the
courts.

Domain Name
Registration - The process of alloting a new, specific domain
name to an owner.

Domain Name System
(DNS) - The hierarchical referencing system by which easy-to-remember domain
name addresses (such as "mycompany.com") are mapped to numeric IP
addresses (such as "123.123.4.5") on the Internet.
Note that the acronym DNS can stand for both Domain Name System and
Domain Name Service.

Download - To receive
information from another computer over a network. The opposite of upload.

Dropped Domain - A previously registered domain
name whose registration was allowed to lapse by the original owner
(often times because the registration fees were not paid). A dropped
domain is available for registration by the public.

DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) - A relatively
new type of high-speed Internet
connection that allows high-speed data communications over existing
copper telephone lines. The speed of DSL communications ranges from
about 128Kbps to over 8Mbps.

Dynamic IP Address -
A variable IP
address that is delegated to a computer or server
each time it is connected to the Internet.
Many ISPs
use a dynamic IP address system in order to reduce the number of IP
addresses they need to maintain. Each time a computer connects, it will
be assigned an available IP
address from the ISP's
bank of IP
addresses and will use that IP
address until it disconnects. Use of this system greatly reduces the
number of unused IP
addresses at any given time, but, because a computer's address
continually changes, a dynamic IP
address system can cause difficulty in accessing a computer online.